School students to strike with walkout starting at the legislature

Student groups are planning a globally coordinated school walk-out, Friday, March 15 in protest at world governments’ climate change policies.

The strike is inspired by 16 year-old Greta Thunberg who’s call to “get angry and transform anger into action” was met by school children across Europe and Australia. Small-scale walk-outs were also reported in Canada, including a small contingent of students holding a meeting with Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps on the issue, during school hours.

The protestors want the provincial and federal governments to halt all new fossil fuel projects and their associated high-carbon producing industries. These include the Trans-mountain tar sands expansion project and Vancouver Island industrial logging operations.

The event is co-sponsored by Youth For Climate–Victoria, Social and Environmental Alliance, Our Earth our Future, Youth Strikes for Climate, Rise and Resist and the Greater Victoria Teachers Association (GVTA).

“We hope to bring positive transformation and healing to our communities and to the Earth. With our collective energy the intention of this strike is to actively embody the vision that we all carry in our hearts for a safe, equitable and sustainable future,” said student organizer Antonia Paquin.

The GVTA announced it will send executive reps and teachers from each high-school in the region to the strike action.

The walk–out will start at the B.C. Legislature at noon, before proceeding to the intersection of Fort Street and Douglas Street at 1 p.m. The protest will form part of the Global Student Strike for Climate, happening in 55 countries and hundreds of communities across the world on March 15.

Organizers say, “The global student strike is a sustained global campaign of youth mobilization intended to ramp up pressure on governments and corporations to respond to the the climate emergency in scale. Its goal is to pressure governments to take immediate action to facilitate a sharp shift away from fossil fuels and for re-investment in a post-carbon, renewable energy infrastructure that will meet the scientific timelines of the recent 2018 report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”